Quickie Review: 3/5 on Goodreads.
This is a collection of stories (hence the ‘et. all’ in the title as Daniel H. Wilson did not write the stories in this book – except the last one. And I got this off netgalley and was suppose to be read before April 6th (which I clearly failed at =S) but oh well! I wouldn’t call myself knowledgeable in the sci-fi realm as I think I’ve only actually read like two sci-fi books in my life but started getting into sci-fi on both book and tv/movie platforms over the past 2 years.
So, my review? This book has lots of robot uprising (hence the title duh!) short stories and each and everyone was interesting in different ways; be it the robots having emotions or being suspenseful and a fearful story or just simply you wanted to know ‘how the heck were these characters gunna survive?!’ Also, they almost all leave you with dis-satisfaction of ‘I want more! I want a full novel!’ which isn’t a bad thing. Thoroughly enjoyable, although I assume, more enjoyable if you take your time reading it rather than all together without a normal book break in between.
As this is a collection of short stories, I won’t go into any spoilers nor my usual ‘plot’ and ‘character’ sections. Instead I will list the different stories below and give a brief teasery synopsis and/or my thoughts on it (pssh. unlined ones will be my favs!).
Complete God: Little bot are helping clean up the radiation in America but it’s creator has other plans. God, suspense, mysterious, great cliffhanger ending, loved it!
Cycles: Hinted robot love?
Lullaby: Nanobots in the house.
Eighty Miles an Hour, All the Way to Paradise: Two girls trying to find a safe heaven; but could politeness be the answer? Weird cliff-hangar ending.
Executable: It tried to get out and set off a virus?!
The Omnibot Incident: A boy gets a bot on Christmas day. Least terrifying story, in my opinion. Very cute.
Epoch: I unfortunately skipped this one after a few pages; a lot of technical talk and just didn’t interest me.
Human Intelligence: A mans sole survival as a spy; twist ending! Love, love, loved!
The Golden Hour: A family of robots and their human child. Such a great story, a little confusing and that ending was just satisfying ❤
Sleepover: This was probably the longest story of them all and is about a man who wakes up in the future and all is not what it was suppose to be. Some of the robotic communication elements in this story I just could suspend disbelief for but never the less a fascinating read!
Seasoning: Robots have found the key to getting on with humans; with food! Great ending.
Nanonauts! In Battle with tiny Death-Subs!: A battle in the brain! This was another weird one, I couldn’t quite grab the concept and almost thought ‘is this story about cancer rather than robots?’.
Of dying Heroes and the Deathless Deeds: Meet Pony, a robot, who is receiving therapy because he is broken; is he more human than he thought? Rather vivid in it’s violent recollections and a not very nice ending.
The Robot and the Baby: A story about a robot and a baby! This story is very bittersweet; cute with a sad ending.
We are all Misfit Toys in the Aftermath of the Velveteen War: Children are the main theme in this story. It is sad and interesting but one thing did annoy me; the amount of times ‘The War is Over. The War will never end.’ was repeated.
Spider the Artist: Couldn’t read this one. Me and spiders = no no.
Small Things: About robots named Cretes and atomic bombs!
Negatives: For me, it was a bit long and maybe that’s because it was my first short story collection read. And as mentioned; probably best to take your time reading through this book rather than just focusing on the book all in one go; I kind of suffered from robot overload because I didn’t read a normal book in between it.
Alex in Bookland 